Some of you may already be using Vamos. Vamos is an easy to use event guide that helps you gain access to the most interesting events in your city. You can find everything from art & entertainment, to food & drink, and fashion to club events easily and share them with your friends. You can also follow your favorite venues.

We spoke to Luis-Daniel Alegría, founder & CEO of Vamos, about the app, Berlin, where it’s going and how to make it in Berlin.

1. Luis, congrats to Vamos – just like a good wine it’s getting better
and better. When did you get the idea to start Vamos?

The idea was born on a trip to Amsterdam in 2011 when me and my co-founder had one of those moments, when we where trying to find something fun to do for the evening and we quickly noticed that all the major platforms such as lonely planet, trip advisor, foursquare etc. were only giving us the top 10 things to do based on location rather then actual local events. So what we did was to attend one of the recommended places and we found out that the bar was great but the event for the evening was a rock event (which none of us were into). On the same night we wrote down the idea that it would be great to find all the ongoing events in any given city and make them accessible on a map. That was the seed to what later became Vamos.

2. How has the ride been? What were the toughest parts?

The ride has been an adventurous roller-coaster with some ups and downs but with constant progress. As you said, like a great wine it gets better every year! The toughest part is to have enough patience since we have a huge backlog of ambitious ideas we want to execute but, due to economical limitations, we naturally have to progress step by step.

3. Why are you doing it in Berlin and what’s the best about doing it here?

I lived previously in London, and Berlin is one of those places that makes perfect sense to run a start-up from. You have the supportive ecosystem of entrepreneurs and talent and on top of that you also have low living costs which makes it possible to bootstrap your start-up the first couple of months to manage to get a prototype or early beta of the ground. So if I would compare it with Stockholm and London I would say that one of the key advantages is that your money lasts for 2-3 times longer than in other big European cities.

4. What’s the worst thing about doing in Berlin?

Well not much, besides the German bureaucratic system is still stuck in the ’90s where everything pretty much takes 2-3 times longer than another developed city :)

5. You guys bootstrapped in the beginning how did you pay for rent?

Depending on the definition (which in my mind means that you survive with the bare minimum and invest all you’ve got into your startup) then I would say that we are still bootstrapping. How we payed for our rent in the beginning… well let’s put it this way – we worked from my living-room and we had lots of conferences and presentations in my bedroom :) for a couple of months before one of our investors kindly offered us some office space in their offices.

6. We have already featured Ask Helmut as well as beatguide.me. What differentiates you guys?

First of all I would like to state that I like both services, since Beatguide is doing a great job with curating electronic music events and AskHelmut has a magazine approach to Berlin events. The difference between us is that we offer a global event guide that works in most of the bigger cities and we offer a diverse type of content – everything from food & drink, flea markets and pop-up shops to parties. We also aggregate events from the biggest event sources such as Facebook, Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, Eventim and Stubhub, which allows us to have one of the most complete event catalogues in the world. So whenever you are looking for interesting things to do (like we were doing in Amsterdam) you can be sure that Vamos is there for you. Just check it out for yourself.

About Luis: 
Luis-Daniel Alegría, 27. I am a Swedish entrepreneur with Chilean heritage who is the CEO and co-founder of Vamos, a Berlin-based event discovery app that helps users locate public events happening around them.

Since launching in August 2012, the app has quickly gained attention and popularity from capital cities around the world. Prior to co-founding Vamos, I’ve had a strong background in event organization and studied Business Management at Sweden’s Hyper Island. I also worked in marketing and product strategy at award-winning digital agencies such as BBH and in AKQA’s London and Berlin offices.

Give it a spin here:
Web: http://www.getvamos.com/
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vamos-event-guide-for-nightlife/id546732445?mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vamos.androidapp